It would be a shame if someone else created a throwaway account to express similar sentiment about a similar firm and named them.
114 karma · joined January 23, 2021
Careful, friend. This road does not lead where you think it leads...
I'm not suggesting "this is just the way things are." I'm saying that you haven't even identified "the way things are", and yet you're using vague insinuations to demonstrate judgement.
I do not suggest that one must be 100% precise or granular to do so. That would be a rationalization for "this is just the way things are". I do, however, suggest a more nuanced expression before labeling something as "good" or "bad".
> I assume you're picking nits over semantics because there's no disagreeing with the fact that over one million Americans file for bankruptcy due to unpaid medical bills every year.
> You know well the argument that was being made, but you decided to ignore the wider point to quibble pointlessly over semantics. Why?
I'm picking nits because the absence of precision leads to incorrect assessment and incorrect solution.
No, I do not dispute that there are one million bankruptcies filed in a year. I don't know how precise it is or how many are influenced by medical expenses, but I'm taking you at your word that you're making a truthful statement.
But I do assert that "one million bankruptcies" is an effectively meaningless statement without knowing more. For example, let's say you have no previous knowledge of the following:
"90% of residents in Oak Parks Village die within the first 5 years of their residency."
Assuming zero further knowledge, one could infer many things:
- Oak Parks Village is dangerous
- residents are unhealthy
- Oak Parks Village makes its residents unhealthy
- residents have a death wish
If we're stuck with no granularity, one could imagine that it's "a hell hole" or "a sanctuary" or any number of things. Solutions could be to eliminate Oak Parks Village, deter people from residing there, and so on.
To act or judge based on these assumptions is wrong. Why? Because Oak Parks Village is a nursing home that admits elderly patients, 80% of whom have terminal pre-existing conditions.
One doesn't necessarily need the granularity of the exact demographic of the facility, or where exactly it's located, or a whole bunch of other things in order to make a judgement. But some features of it are crucial to understand before one can understand Oak Parks Village or what, if anything, should be done about it.
If one, knowing this information, would like to extend lives, one could try to understand the medical conditions that lead to the greatest number of deaths and possibly address it. But without identifying relevant features—even if with broad strokes—any assessment or action would be irresponsible.
The statement "one million bankruptcies are filed due to unpaid medical bills every year" is almost as meaningless as just knowing that Oak Parks Village exists. Is the problem lack of insurance? Is it low wages? Price gouging? Lack of choice? What is the outcome for these people? What other factors contribute?
I'm not being pedantic. You're being general. Way too general to make an assessment or imply its contribution to the question seeking relevance to a problem.
One doesn't have to be without action in the absence of perfect information. But it is hugely irresponsible to communicate a problem when one cannot even identify the problem, just a symptom of something.
So no, I didn't ignore the wider point. I challenge that your wider point doesn't address the question of the parent comment because you're using side effects to insinuate a problem that you don't identify but presume to be understood.
I'm not sure if you're familiar with programming, but if you are, and someone files a bug "one million people file bankruptcy for medical expenses", would you be able to address it with no further information? What would be the changes to the "code" that you make? If you can't identify concrete changes, then you haven't identified the problem.
How much? What's the percentile breakdown? How does it impact their monthly income? What's their economic potential without the degree? Are you suggesting it's higher if most just hadn't gotten a degree? How many choose economically unviable degrees? Who made them do that?
You're simplifying a complex issue—and inferring a problem—without demonstrating the problem. The fact that 50% of college educated adults have student loan debt tells me absolutely nothing of substance.
I don't understand how you can make a judgement in any regard without that information.
> 0.35% of adults file for medical bankruptcy alone every year.
There's no such thing as "medical bankruptcy", so I assume you mean "bankruptcy caused by medical bills". For how many of these people is the medical bill the sole cause? A major cause? One of many causes?
Again, without identifying this in a more granular way, you're asserting some undefined "problem" which means there's no equitable mechanism to rectify that problem.
> Maternal leave is by law unpaid, and few companies offer paid leave and paternal leave is virtually unheard of outside of extremely progressive companies.
Here again stating a condition, but not identifying the problem. To what end? What's the cost to the family? To the mother? To the child? The social cost?
I can't help but feel you're just regurgitating political talking points which, frankly, aren't designed to solve problems. They're designed to emotionally hook with a voter base and ultimately get the person elected, or the newspaper sold, or whatever self-serving reason someone in power would actively choose to be so vague as to not even concretely identify a problem. It's just the notion of a problem.
I'm not saying there's no problems. I'm just saying you spent a lot of words trying to counter the parent post, but didn't say much at all. I'd like to learn more about this, but I can't find much online, and unfortunately your post wasn't very helpful.
Do you know more than you said and you're just holding it close to your chest for the sake of brevity?
I'm not sure what this means to you, but "economic precarity" is a meaningless statement without context. For example, in the US, pretty much anyone living in destitution is unwell. It's practically impossible to starve to death in the US. etc
So what this means is: economic mobility is limited for 20% of the population. That's not good, but in practice that translates to difficulty creating generational wealth, not a recipe for people starving or living in filth. Mobility would be much better, but it generally correlates strongly with level of education which is a separate chicken/egg problem. (At least until you get into massive student debt without a valuable degree, then that correlation shifts significantly.)
> Your Capital was stormed by terrorist from your own country.
What happened that day was not good, but framing it as a "terrorist insurrection" is exceedingly dishonest reporting. This is made plain by the kinds of charges that are being filed by the federal government. (Which, under the current administration, has no reason to "go soft" or brush things under the rug.)
There were a small number (single digits) of dissidents that wished to engage in... something not well thought out. There were a much greater number of people that trespassed into the capitol. There was an even larger number of people outside that were (as the FBI director put it) "rowdy".
All this because the former president insisted that he was cheated. (Which, frankly, there wasn't a lot of effort put into building confidence beyond "trust us!") Wholly inappropriate, bad, but not terrorism. We've experienced terrorism before (from other countries, from our political Right, and from our political Left) and this wasn't that. Anyone who suggests that is misinformed or leveraging it for political purposes.
> Widespread policy brutality lead to protests over the entire country, culminating in city blocks being burnt down in what, a dozen cities?
There is no widespread police brutality. Again, this is political framing. There are problems, no doubt, but nothing that could even reasonably be colored as "widespread brutality".
Just as there were problems of confidence during the election—egged on for political reasons—that resulted in an inappropriate reaction by protestors, there are problems of confidence—again, egged on for political reasons—about our police force.
Unfortunately, this resulted in significant overreaction that did, sadly, result in a tremendous amount of damage.
But do you notice the underlying theme, here? Political and media framing are largely responsible for exceedingly dangerous levels of division. It's not that Righty Rick is evil or Lefty Lane is evil.
It's a game of power by the institutions that control culture. The people are the pawns.
So yes, in that regard, we've got major problems: the elite. Not necessarily "the rich" (although they're largely complicit), but almost the whole of the elite institutions.
The people are at each others' throats not because there are rampant problems, poverty, abuse, etc. They are at it because the elites are at war. There isn't much to stand for the people engaging in a violent revolution, at least not conditionally. There is, however, if they're poked and prodded enough by the elite class.
So no, he's not being sarcastic.
upvoted
- it wouldn't be liquid, so you'd be giving part ownership in assets
- the value would be slightly less than median yearly income per recipient. At a pretty sizeable 5% average return, the individuals would net about $2,000 a year.
- if they chose to sell the assets, they would end up with about one year's median income and then it's gone
I'm not sure how much money you think lives up at the top, but redistributing it is not sustainable, and it's certainly not enough to magically pull everyone out of poverty indefinitely. (Or even for very long, at that.)
There are a ton of reasonable discussions to be had about imbalanced power structures between socioeconomic groups, but this whole redistribution thing is just a fantasy.
One can look at a million/billionaire and say, "oh, this person has 50 cars. That's way too many cars for one person to have! Let's give them away to people who actually need cars!" So you seize them and give them away—along with the other 12,000 super wealthy people that own 50 or more cars—and then you have... 200,000 people who still don't have cars.
For groups that preach so frequently about global and ecological sustainability, there's a disturbing blind spot for economic sustainability. I think that's more a feature of envy than responsibility, unfortunately.
The State actively deprived the rapist of their ability to act autonomously to care for themselves, so they are obligated to do so on their behalf. The State (typically) does not actively deprive an innocent person who can't find a job of their autonomy. (There are some arguable scenarios in which they do, however, such as excessive fines, but obligation to pay those are dependent on ability, and feeding ones-self supercedes that in most jurisdictions.)
> some people are disorganised, not very clever, etc. You can only claim laziness if we had like a right to a job no matter what.
It is ethical to care for those who are unable to care for themselves. It's not as clearly ethical to force someone else to care for those who are unable to care for themselves.
Voluntary rejection by individuals based on internal principals and a desire to avoid unhealthy media as a personal choice. No cancelling, no censoring, just people deciding not to expose themselves to such things, just as most choose not to drink all day, for example. There may be some social stigma that arises from this, but hopefully not much more than, "Ah, that's too bad."
This is all a pipe dream, however...
I understand you aren't sure what they've enumerated for themselves. The point is that they don't follow most of the most obvious standards one could conceive on a whim. If one had no formal knowledge of ethics, but chose to engage in a quick thought experiment in which one identifies "the basis of communicating truth", the NYT (currently) do not adhere to practically any beyond "factual".
Let's say they follow the generalizations in your wikipedia link:
> ...most share common elements including the principles of truthfulness, accuracy, objectivity, impartiality, fairness, and public accountability.
Abject failure on:
- accuracy
- objectivity
- impartiality
And just a bit further down:
> ...the ethics of journalism include the principle of "limitation of harm." This may involve the withholding of certain details from reports, such as... information not materially related to the news report where the release of such information might, for example, harm someone's reputation.
Well the NYT article is an absolute rejection of this principal. (Not that you disagree.)
I'm not sure what ethical standards you do think they follow, but whatever conversation they had about whether to reveal his name (or the ethics of the article at large) clearly didn't emphasize honorable intent in good faith.
The most generous interpretation I can muster for their ethics revolves around some notion of, "for the greater good." But history is pretty clear that's an invariably evil form of ethics.
I have no doubt they think they're doing "good", but their rejection of objective standards puts them in the camp of "partisan propaganda", far away from "journalism".
However, I think it's clear that many media institutions have abused their power upon the foundation of their seminal integrity. They've had the power for a long time—and have instances of abuse—but not like we've seen the last few years.
The notion that they have "too much" power, however, is a very, very dangerous one. Any forcible resolution for this is—or should be—unpalatable. (And that's usually the insinuation when one discusses "too much" anything.)
It's clear that we need a reckoning among the people to help shift perception of what is deemed appropriate forms of news. I don't know that's possible in the current state of our culture, though.
The technological landscape has transformed the psyche of the people with such rapidity and force the likes of which has never been seen on this planet. Some self-aware individuals recognize the psychological dangers of our current state and choose not to participate, but I don't know that there's enough of them to make a difference.
Laziness, depersonalization, greed, envy... these are all rampant within our online communities, and all forms of media prey on our vulnerability to them. The world has largely transformed to a seething mass of unsustainable behavior. While the media has the power to at least influence a healthy message, they're desperately trying to maintain control... fire with fire.
The only ethical response to this is rejection. Rejection of communities that engage in unhealthy behavior. Rejection of media that engage in unhealthy behavior. Rejection in general of the unhealthy behavior.
Fortunately, a lot of people who grew up in the world before this insanity took over see how bad it's gotten. Others are burned and leave. Some never got involved.
The best we can hope for is rapid acceleration to such a degree that people reject the forms of messaging that have taken the world, en masse. At this rate, that actually may happen.
The worst that could happen would be one of either forceful rejection or such a slow burn that not enough jump ship.
Who knows what will happen, but we have at most one or two generations for the majority to recognize this or the well is poisoned. For all the worry about global warming or communism or fascism or whatever, very few seem too concerned about the implosion that's been growing the last couple decades.
I hate to use the phrase, "but this time it's different," because it's usually not. But this global connection that's been abused to infect our minds by charlatans is truly unprecedented in scale, force, and insidiousness.
The world is increasingly addicted to new forms of mind drugs that are anything but apparent, and their use are rationalized, increasingly less optional, and devastatingly subversive.
I know I sound like a madman, but if the state of our modern communities—in parallel with the growth of global connectedness over the last decade—doesn't reveal the cause, I challenge anyone to provide an alternative explanation.
The internet is quite possibly the most wonderful and most insidious development by the human mind, ever. To enable and amplify the best and the worst of humanity is truly unique, and at such a devastating scale. And I don't think the human race is is equipped do anything but abuse it for the worst.
Disclosure: I am a former singularitarian fast turning luddite.
I'm sorry, what "ethical commitments" did the NYT have that required them to reveal Scott's identity? They have—over the last few years—systematically abused the privilege of anonymous sources. If this was some sort of manifest reversal of said abuse, I could maybe understand. But that's not what this was. It was a partisan choice to "out" him in a direct or incidental attempt to cancel/silence him.
They hold absolute secrecy for other sources that seek anonymity. (Or, in some cases, when revelation of that source wouldn't be a good look for their paper.) I cannot fathom any sort of ethical purpose—to their readers or to journalism—that necessitates his reveal.
Maybe you can help me understand the gymnastics of contorting ethics in such a way that this makes any logical sense, I would appreciate it. Because—from my vantage point and from innumerable other examples—the NYT has tossed every ethical framework out the window for the sake of their ego, id, wallets, power, and agenda.
They try to maintain the aire of integrity in their rapidly crumbling empire, but the emperor has no clothes. So please help me see what I'm missing.
It can be subtle, but generally if the "others" are identified with attributes like "inferior", "threat", "danger", etc., the society is on track for massacre or war. The stronger this division is, the closer the society is to some atrocity or another.
If the side that's "othering" a group has great or vastly imbalanced power, then the result is likely to be a massacre. If not, then it's likely a war will occur.
It's sometimes hard to tell if a group is being "othered", but generally if you can replace a generalization with the word "others" or "those people" and it sounds sinister, then that's probably what's happening.
Examples:
"The Patriots defeated the Giants."
Rephrased: "The Patriots defeated the others."
Not sinister; no threat of massacre/war.
"The Russians attacked our voting infrastructure in 2016."
Rephrased: "The others attacked our voting infrastructure in 2016."
Somewhat sinister; possibly war.
"Muslims have attacked two buildings in New York.".
Rephrased: "Those people have attacked two buildings in New York."
Sinister; risk of massacre.
"Whites are responsible for implicit racism by nature of their history of oppression."
Rephrased: "The others are responsible for implicit racism..."
Somewhat sinister; possible war or massacre.
"Adults are increasingly falling into debt."
Rephrased: "Those people are increasingly falling into debt."
Not sinister.
"Blacks are responsible for 5x more murders than whites."
Rephrased: "Those people are responsible for 5x more murders than us."
Sinister; possible massacre.
The frequency and intensity with which you witness these types of phrases—especially in the face of increasing generalization that captures less and less aspects of individuality—the closer you are to something bad happening.
And if it's accepted as de facto with no room for nuance or argument, then your society is likely on the precipice of atrocity.
The best way to fight it? Recognize when it happens and call it out for what it is: dehumanization.
I'd like to clarify one thing that I think was nebulous in my post: while I think "the people" are the responsible party, I meant to suggest that choosing who is the responsible party at all is close to arbitrary.
That is to say, arguments over who's held responsible more reflects who we want to be responsible than who may actually be responsible, which is in fact shared among several people. (The CEO, the intern, the person who gave the intern the password, the person who configured the system to require a password that could be leaked, etc.)
We choose the CEO (or Ted Cruz, or whomever) because of our own biases, in spite of the fact that responsibility is shared, and in spite of the fact that who's "in charge" is nebulous at best.
We do the same when blaming the 12 US billionaires (or however many there are) for income inequality in the country, or blame all white people for racial injustice, and so on.
That doesn't mean there aren't responsible parties, or that people and groups should be free from criticism. The truth of the matter is that—no matter how justified it is to assign blame—it's exceedingly rare for anyone to take responsibility for their own failings.
This shouldn't necessarily contort to whom and how we assign blame. But, rather, it should inform us of the breadth of the problem, our own contributions to it, and help us become better citizens, instead of shift the blame as the CEO or Cruz did.
If we find that unpalatable, but don't acknowledge our own complicity, then all we've achieved is a pitchfork-laden witch hunt, and not actual direction towards resolution.
Thank you for your very interesting example! I'll try to address it:
I believe this analogy to be erroneous. An appropriate example would fall somewhere along the lines of the following:
Imagine, in basketball, if a player fouls another player. Or, rather, a team fouls a great number of players on the opposing team. Nothing is done and the opposing team loses.
During a later game—years later, when none of the original players play for either team anymore—the two teams meet up. For an indefinite number of games between two teams, the fouled team is prescribed some number of free throws for all members of their team.
Would you consider that to be an appropriate facility to rectify the past injustice? Perhaps the fouled team's reputation was damaged because of past, persistent losses, so they were no longer able to compete effectively for years. But over time, referees notice the fouls and punish them as they occur, with traditional "fouled player gets free throws".
Should the fouls of the past team be enforced on the new, modern team in such the way described with indefinite, prescribed free throws?
Your example is obvious: yes, those individuals who are harmed are right to have an opportunity to regain advantage after they are fouled upon. But that is an equitable and obvious form of justice that has been—in one form or another—the default perspective throughout history.
What you're talking about, however, is not that. It's a far more complicated scenario the effects of which are far more difficult to quantify.
If one is to assert that harms done to people who no longer exist by people who no longer exist should be rectified by people related to those who were harmed, then I think it is also the responsibility of such a person to clearly outline and justify:
- the limits of who is eligible to receive such justice
- the degree to which harm has "trickled down" to the modern individual
- why others who have been victims of injustice are not eligible for justice
- a prescription for resolution that adequately repairs the harms
- from whom the justice should be paid
Now, this is exceedingly complex, and one could argue that it's not fair to remain complete inactive just because we cannot perfectly balance these variables. Some justice is better than no justice.
The problem is that innocent people are victimized by the decision to do something when it's not possible to quantify the impossible variables. (From which my basketball example stems.)
Now, the predominant argument seems to be something along the lines of, "we don't have to figure out these variables because everyone from the fouling team has benefited from the history."
I will counter this with an admittedly extremely offensive and unpalatable response. Before I do so, I want to be clear that my writing this does not mean that I advocate it. I mention it to show that it's not a simple matter, even if we reduce it to "those who benefit from the injustice."
If we assert that justice should be served by the people who benefited from past injustice, then it would be apt to identify that those whose ancestors faced injustice have—in some way—also benefited from the injustice. That is not to say that they are responsible, but rather to illustrate that such justification for choosing from whom the justice should come is not simple or clear.
I assert that if the principal is to ensure that those who have faced injustice—or have been indirectly harmed by injustice—are adequately "made right", then the onus is on those prescribing resolution to do it without creating further victims. If that is impossible (which it is), then it is their responsibility to identify at least a generalization of who may be victimized by such justice, and to what degree.
What I see, however, is absolute disregard for the fact that someone, anyone, is victimized by retroactive justice. No analysis or discussion of its side effects. I find this to be ethically offensive, if for no other reason than it is hypocritical to the notion of "justice" for which it purports to be.
Anything other than either precision or at least affirmative acknowledgement of side effects is either ignorant, partisan, racial, or emotional. It is not "justice" nor is it ethical.
To assert that it is the "right" thing to do is just as wrong as pretending no injustice occurred at all.
So the current state of things or path to "justice"? Call it for what it is: vengeance. Because justice is not indiscriminate.
> Ted Cruz claimed it was his children's fault for pressuring him into their trip...
I'll bite. (Stick with me; I'll get to the point after some analysis that may be objectionable or seem unrelated.)
He's got responsibility to two parties: the citizens of his state and his children. Both are important in different ways, and the needs of each conflict in certain circumstances.
Did he want to get somewhere warm? Probably.
Did his children want their father with them? Probably.
Was he unable to advise while in Cancun? Doubtful.
Was he unable to legislate while in Cancun. He was not.
So, despite the inappropriate optics of his trip (and reflection of poor character for a leader of the state), it appears as though he made a judgement that favored his family and his self, presumably because he judged no apparent harm to the state by his actions.
I bring all this up because it's relevant to the parallel you bring: he blames his children for the choice. The problem is, neither you nor anyone else I'm aware of have demonstrated harm by his choice. So his "blaming" his children appears to reflect his choice between two conflicting priorities.
The intern, on the other hand, caused demonstrable harm and the CEO blames his own decisions on said intern.
Cruz did not blame lack of preparedness on his children. He blamed bad optics on his choice to acquiesce to his children. Far as I can tell, you're bringing a straw man to a knife fight.
I don't think your assertion is incorrect, that incompetence and lack of integrity are responsible for the CEO's choice, but I don't think you demonstrated that properly with your parallel. I find Ted Cruz to be pretty unpalatable, but I believe the hype around his trip is exaggerated, and your use of it to affirm your assertion is misplaced.
However, in an effort to make this more interesting, let's say the parallel is appropriate. I would, for the sake of argument, challenge that the fault, instead, lies in the hands of the people of Texas. If "the buck stops here", then let us remember that there is an entity above that of Ted Cruz, and that is the people of Texas.
If we truly believe that mistakes are not the fault of the individual who made the mistake, but rather the person at the top of the chain, then it stands to reason that politicians are not at fault, but rather the citizens that voted that politician in.
Since voters have ultimate responsibility to decide the way in which their community is governed—just as a CEO makes choices that bubble down—then it seems to me the people are ultimately responsible.
And in this context, your parallel seems even more misplaced, because the people of Texas (and the rest of the country) are blaming the "little guy" when those in charge of actually deciding who's hired and who's fired are the responsible parties.
Personally, I find the ultimate lack of integrity in "the people", because everyone blames "government" when "government" goes wrong, but fail to acknowledge that they are, in fact, said government.
I charge you to challenge my assertion and justify your parallel.
Here's the problem with that:
- it was not demonstrated that other more productive forms of change were ineffective; in fact, history shows there has been tremendous progress in the absence of "racism to fight racism"
- it has not been shown that "racism v racism" has improved "that problem"
- it is yet to be shown the negative consequences of such a strategy, but history is full of examples of further suffering, not less
You call it "reasonable", and yet I find a complete lack of reason in its use. When challenged to provide reason, all responses I've witnessed reflect an attitude of, "I don't need to give you a reason/justify it".
To my mind, that is precisely absent of reason, so I challenge your assertion that it is in any way "reasonable".
"I will not ban fracking." ...bans fracking
"$2,000 stimulus checks for everyone." ...$1,400 checks for some
"I have an extensive plan for COVID." ...doesn't have a COVID plan
"We need to close the immigration facilities used to separate parents and children." ...Trump admin closes one site. Biden admin reopens it
"I will eliminate President Trump’s... MPP on day one." ...hasn't ended the MPP
So far, at least on the hot ticket items, he's not running a great track record.
He's done a bunch of little stuff, but the big things promised during the campaign have systematically failed, and several the exact opposite direction.
So, sure, let's see if the career politician honors his commitments. I'm not holding my breath.
We have good measurements of various recent phenomena.
We have bad, inferred, or proxy data of various past phenomena.
We have limited data on cyclic global and extraterrestrial phenomena.
We mash these data into computer simulations of the earth, hit "run", and observe the result.
Herein lies the problem: we're feeding good, not so good, and incomplete data into an incomplete model of a chaotic system the size of the entire planet and projecting this data many years into the future to a result of impressively narrow margins.
We frequently update these models as we learn about new phenomena and interactions. We refine the data we input as we learn to better calibrate or infer its correctness. We run the simulation again and observe the results.
While the desire to improve our methods in the face of new information is a very scientific process, I think the objection is that there is a combination of a tremendous amount of hubris to trust such a large model of such a chaotic system, as well as an incentive structure that is tremendously vulnerable to abuse or corruption.
Of course it is absolutely scientific to be skeptical; that is, after all, a crucial component of the scientific process. That skepticism of this particular process exists is not only to be expected, but should also welcomed.
However, there is exceedingly little dissent within the scientific community. This alone should raise skepticism.
Now, I'm not talking about dissent about CO2's thermal properties or ways in which we measure things. Obviously these are testable, so we can maintain a certain level of confidence in their methods or results.
The global models—and actual, physical global system—are not testable. We cannot "try a little of this and a little of that" to pull apart how the emergent sum of all the parts affect this great chaotic system.
So we have a majority of the scientific community vociferously defending our projections—mostly because of unrelated but adjacent social reasons—and very few pushing the narrative that yes, in fact this is a very brittle process that ultimately thrives on faith.
At least, this is how I imagine a reasoned skeptic may form the justification for their skepticism...
It is in quotes because it conforms to some definition of "correct", which is rather ambiguous, and because hue isn't the only factor of complementary colors.
> While useful, it's clear that our understanding is very limited.
I respectfully disagree. (Though acknowledge that our understanding of color is not complete.) I assert that our understanding of the mathematics of harmonious color are well understood because the spectral relationships are fairly straightforward. It's not uniform, like auditory relationships, but at least narrow-frequency relationships follow pretty simple patterns once the perceptual space is compressed. (Thus 180 degrees being "correct" complementary.)
The problem arises in our computationally-efficient matrices/transfer functions which distort those relationships and introduce the lightness and chromacity. I acknowledge, however, that it's not quite as "firm" as I phrased it.
> ...the only reasonable way to teach people how to pick harmonious colors is to have real humans use their brains and sense of aesthetics.
I agree that it's way better than shifting an HSL/HSV hue 180 (or however many) degrees to find a harmonious color. It's way more complex than that, and a proper tutor is much more valuable than an erroneous color space representation.
sRGB is a non-linear color space that's designed to encode color information for display on CRT monitors and enable low quantization of dark shades. It's not designed to be worked within.
sRGB is an "output referred" color space, which means it was specifically to display color. A "scene referred" color space is designed for manipulation of colors within the image.
Lab is a wonderful scene referred color space, but suffers from mathematical complexities that disables simple mathematical operations. The reason is that shifting a hue, for example, may describe a color that simply does not exist. (Think of it as divide by zero, but for colors.)
Then there are "perceptual" color spaces. Those are designed to enable simple mathematic relationships to produce color relationships that mirror our perception and expectations.
Oklab is one such color space that produces wonderful and quite harmonious color relationships:
https://raphlinus.github.io/color/2021/01/18/oklab-critique....
First and foremost, it's a form of deterrence. The presumption is that others will utilize Tesla's patents to compete, which in turn guarantees that said competitor can't sue Tesla for infringing on their patents. (Such activity is denied in the open patent promise.) It's kind of an informal, de facto patent sharing.
Depending on your opinion of mutually assured destruction, this is either a good thing or a bad thing. Good, perhaps, because of accelerated progress. Bad, perhaps, because this advantage is imbalanced towards Tesla. (They get to use any other company's patents—those that also use Tesla's—but those other companies do not by default get to use other competitors' patents.)
I mention all this free of ethical opinion. Just want to clarify that it is almost certainly not just a simple act of goodwill. Despite this, we can all—at least for now—benefit from such generosity.
And of course when it does, the now-illiberal faction rationalizes it with some manner of, "liberalism, except when..."
The problem with liberalism is that—while it is the most sane mode of structural organization—it is extremely brittle in the face of illiberalism.
Liberalism—and its ancestors/influences—never ate itself, unlike illiberalism. But it does always fall to barbarism. It's like having an argument with an insane person: you may be right, but you'll never win that fight.
That is a seriously concerning weakness, because when liberalism is threatened, the default modes of self preservation are either: roll over and get beaten (as a matter of principal) or reject some (or all) liberalism in order to fight back. In either case, liberalism goes away.
I'm not sure that anyone has ever come up with a reasonable defense. (And maybe there is none.) Humanity seems to prefer pendula. The grass is always greener...
Kodi is easily the best game in town to consume self-hosted media. Or, at least navigate it.
And no, we do not seed or even upload. That can make it difficult to obtain stuff sometimes (bad/low reputation) but we'll hop proxies if we need to.
And before you ask, we don't feel bad about leeching. It's one thing if someone else wants to contribute to piracy, but I'm not willing to myself. This is a mode of convenience, not necessity. The likelihood that we would be contributing to someone with similar ethical principals is pretty low, so we're thankful to the folks that provide, but could take it or leave it.
We've got philosophical/psychological issues with the unending smorgasbord of streaming services, so the children aren't allowed to use those alone for the most part. They have full access to our family library, but they often prefer the discs for some reason. (Our oldest has a DVD she watches frequently and refers to it as "retro".)
We've got external SSD drives with our favorites (since a few server-downtime left us wanting something more convenient—we keep most of our 3+ year old discs in a fireproof safe), but new stuff is often watched by the kids on disc.
And before you ask, no, the safe isn't "for the discs". It's just large enough to have plenty of room for them in CD cases, and that's a pretty reasonable backup in case of disaster. Not sure I understand why some of our friends happily show off $80,000 worth of Blu-rays or $100,000 worth of vinyl in their living rooms. I'd hate to have to recreate our collection, so why bother if we can easily protect it?
Python went the way of Perl 5/6 (though to a much lesser extent) with their upgrade and broke several fundamental language features.
To this day, I still don't understand the aesthetic reason people seem to prefer Python over something like Ruby. I get all the institutional reasons (Python was adopted by academia), and I get the performance reasons (Python used to be much faster), but with the exception of scientific stuff, the library support is pretty darn identical between the two languages.
And, at least among the few people I taught Ruby to that had previous Python experience, every single one said, "oh, this is a lot easier to understand/use."
Obviously, opinions are like... well. But my very humble opinion of Python is that its reputation is undeserved, is not as intuitive as a pseudocode language as Ruby is, and frankly I think the really painful, protracted transition from Python 2.6 to 3 is more a product of people who really only understand 1 programming language not wanting to change. (I see it as the modern BASIC.)
But I'm not here to start a flame war. Just saying there are other reasonable languages that are easy to learn and much more stable than Python's 2/3 transition.